Nuts Are Good

A recent study compared the health of people who ate nuts (tree nuts and peanuts) with those who do not eat nuts often. Conclusion: Nuts are good for you.
The study looked at diet data collected as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (NHANES) between 1999 and 2004. (NHANES is a government program that collects data to be used to develop public health policy.) Participants who ate more than

Forget Fasts and Detoxes

The new year is off and running. Many – perhaps most of us – are now seriously planning to make amends for our holiday excesses. A significant number plan on doing a fast or a detox to get back in balance. I always silently groan when friends announce that they are going on a full blown fast. I cringe when I hear that they are planning on eliminating toxins by cutting calories, taking a variety of herbal capsules and drinking pre-made shakes or juices that easily will wreak havoc on their intestinal flora and burden their liver with lots of fructose and, depending on the juice, some arsenic.

Historically, most cultures favored occasional fasting. Lent is one example. Likely these fasts were beneficial, providing a reprieve for the body from a diet that placed

Fish, measuring the good and the bad

Seafood is a source of long-chained omega-3 fats that our bodies need. Seafood is also a good source of iodine and vitamin D. Yet despite these important nutrients, we are advised to limit how much fish we eat. Most of the advice we get on whether and how to limit our seafood choices is simply based on mercury measurements. The FDA and EPA recommendations that we eat 6-12 ounces of seafood each week while avoiding four species of fish (shark,

Fish trumps fish oil, fins down

I am not opposed to supplements. However, I do find myself increasingly critical of the heavy reliance often placed on them. The more I read, the more I realize how little most of us (myself included) know about our supplements. For instance, health gurus are urging us to take astaxanthin, the latest miracle antioxidant. On some level, most of us know that it probably takes some doing to get astaxanthin into a capsule but most of us have no idea where it actually comes from. The answer: Some astaxanthin is carbon dioxide extracted from algae. Some is extracted from “shrimp waste” using hexane and/or acetone di-ethylamine. That shrimp waste comes from . . . well, it is difficult to learn where it comes from. A shrimp farm in Thailand? A shrimp packing factory in Louisiana? Although those of us

Choosing a Cooking Oil

I teach that a good quality olive oil should be the main oil in the kitchen. In nearly every class I am then asked what oil to use instead of olive oil in “high heat cooking” with many mistakenly believing that they should not sauté their food in olive oil. This happens because there is quite a lot of confusion about what “high heat cooking” is. I recently came across a list of “The Top Ten Best Cooking Oils” commented on by a dietician and a chef and decided to use this list as a springboard for my own evaluation of cooking oils. (Remember: The order and choices are theirs, not mine.)

Another Reason to Avoid Juices

As we discuss in class, juices pose a number of problems and our bodies actually do better without them. First, we typically strain the fiber out of most our juices, fiber we need to grow the right intestinal flora. Second, even if we drink juices that retain the fruits’ fiber, juicing typically changes how much fruit we end up eating. When we have to chew and swallow, we fill up more quickly because we have the opportunity to provide our brain with some feedback via grehlin on how satiated we are. We might eat an orange or a few carrots for a snack. But, if we were juicing, we might well instead use 2-4 oranges or up to 10 carrots to make a glass of juice. In our culture, we usually think that if something is good for us, more is better. Actually, more of anything than our body really wants is seldom a good thing. In the case of juice, we are ingesting much more fructose as a result of increasing our fruit and sweet vegetable intake by juicing. And fructose is difficult for the body. Any excess fructose grows the simple sugar loving microbes, that are not beneficial 

Soy, friend or foe in breast cancer?

There is still some confusion about the estrogenic effect of soy. Oncologists still advise women with estrogen-positive breast cancer to avoid soy. Some women are told that soy foods may have a negative effect on their tamoxifen treatment. Women with risk factors for breast cancer often believe they should avoid soy foods as part of preventing cancer.

However, these recommendations and fears are not supported by clinical studies. In fact, soy’s image as a healthy food in the West was largely triggered by the much lower incidence of breast cancer in Asian women, where soy usually is eaten daily.

Instead, soy is avoided because of data from animal studies, and flawed animal studies at that. In these studies, scientists implanted breast cancers into mice without thymus glands and ovaries.